More Money

No… No… it’s not me crying out. I am satisfied with the amount of money that I get (Of course I will not mind more). This post is for the West Indian players who failed to make the trip to Sri Lanka. They have yet again betrayed die hard West Indian fans like me and my friend Nakul (a close fiend of mine from school). Irrespective of victories or defeats (which have been the order of the day), both of us have always supported the team and even a slightly good performance from them has made us very happy.

There has been this sponsorship row that has been going on for the last 6 months and doesn’t seem to end. First they form a players association and fight for it and then now they have asked the ICC to step in to sort out the issue. I have no problems with the association or their demands for more money. But let’s face the facts.

How many series, forget series, matches has the team won for the last 3-5 years. They have even struggled to beat minnows like Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. The only significant result that I have seen is the victory in the last ICC champion’s trophy. There is something I should point out here. Well played guys, you really gave a lot of joy to me and Nakul. We did party in our own small way. Both of us thought that this would be the turning point. But, that didn’t happen. All we got to see were more and more loses. The performances never improved. Blasted away in less than 3 days against most opposition. No glimmer of even a fight. Lost to England in both the away and home series. Nothing improved against South Africa either.

All that happened was hat the board was blamed for not paying more. The players wouldn’t go to the Sri Lanka series just because the board didn’t pay more. Why don’t these guys understand that from where will the board get more money to pay unless there are results. All of us understand that you have commitments but I think you are paid for performing like in any other job. If you don’t perform you don’t get paid. It’s as simple as that. Here for one moment I am not saying that the board is correct. I think the board did not invest correctly when they had money to develop cricket in this part of the world. They just thought that the big guns like Ambrose, Walsh etc would just play on forever.

But guys whatever said you have totally disappointed us. And at the end we hear people like Ridley Jacobs and Darren Ganga criticize Lara to be the reason why some team members don’t perform. They claim he is not a team man. Let me please stress here that no matter what you guys say he is the best batsman in the world (Even better than Sachin). He has been the only shining light in WI cricket for a long time. He has single handedly helped WI win matches. I think you owe something to the man. And Mr. Ganga you score half the runs (first get into this depleted side at least) and then talk.

Guys one thing for sure, both myself and Nakul will always support you and cheer for you. But please grow up and start thinking properly and show us some fighting spirit in the matches. You have a great history and don’t let all of us down.

I hope at least some players from the team would read this. Lara please fly down to Sri Lanka and play, don’t bother about what they say. The team needs you.

At the time of writing this post WI are tottering at 52/6 in the 2nd innings in the 1st test match against SL.

Steven Gerrards’ U-Turn

For all those who don’t know about Steven Gerrard, let me just introduce him to you. This 25 year old football player hails from Liverpool, England. He plays in the midfield position for both Liverpool and England. He is the talismanic and inspirational captain of Liverpool. He has been linked with this club for almost 17 years now. He started at Liverpool at the age of 8 and has ever since been there at Anfield (that’s the ground where Liverpool play there matches).

What a 2005 it has been for this man!! He led Liverpool to glory in this year’s UEFA Champions League beating AC Milan in the final (Read more about the match on my post The Reds are champions of Europe).

On this day he had pledged his future to the club. Earlier in the year there were speculations of him leaving for more European football (UEFA Champions League) and more titles. He was linked with clubs of the caliber of Real Madrid. But the news of him pledging his future to the club only brought more joy to the fans.

But this was to be short-lived. He had asked for an increase in his wages to £ 80,000 – 90,000 per week in the new contract he was going to sign. Now Liverpool had agreed to a deal in this range and after the Final had just delayed the negotiations and the final signing. This was not taken very well by Steven and about 10 days ago he told Sky Sports that he would want to leave the club.

He was now being linked to clubs like Real Madrid, Chelsea and Manchester United. Knowing the class of this Liverpool and England midfielder the big spending clubs upped the anti. Chelsea made a bid for him which was quoted to be £ 37.4 million (About 58 million $). Liverpool immediately rejected the bid saying that he was not for sale. The clubs chairman had a long discussion with his captain. It was quoted in the newspapers that he had a long and emotional talk with him. Steven pointed out that he had been in turmoil over the last week or so and, guess what the supporters who cheered for started shouted slogans against him calling him a traitor.

The next day after the talk with Chairman Steven Gerrard’s career took a U-Turn. He told the newspapers that he had decided to stay with the club and has pledged his future to the club. The contract was signed and it ended all the speculations and talks of a potential sell off of him.

He pledged that he would win back the support of the fans who knew about him since he was a child. He has been born and brought up at Liverpool. Liverpool’s defense of the Champions League kicked off early as they did not have direct entry into the League stages due to their non finish in the top 4 during the regular EPL season 2004-05. However, on regular plea the club was granted permission to play in the champion’s league but only by playing first in the qualifying stages. In the first match they faced Welsh Champions TNS and guess what Steven Gerrard score a hat trick in front of the 50,000 Mersyside faithful and they gave him a rousing standing ovation at the end of the game. His name was taken throughout the game. Look’s like he has won the support back. Well Chelsea, Real and the rest just watch out as the talismanic inspirational captain leads the Mersyside giants in their title defense. Very few doubt the fact that he can lead them to Premiership Glory within the next five years that he has pledged to the club.

One of the biggest U-Turn’s in recent years.

My First Saturday at Work

Today is the fist time I have had to work on a Saturday (apart from during training where I did come to office on a Saturday) after joining Infosys. Well, it was expected because the proposal needs to be ready by Monday so that we can courier it and lots of work had to be done.

I cam by vehicle today to office as my sister had to go for a training session and it was in a nearby area. So I dropped her and came to office by 10.30am and did work up to 12:30. After that I watched TV in Chalapathy’s room up to 2:30pm. I saw the New Zealand All Blacks thrash Sir Clive Woodward managed British and Irish Lions and then came back and continued with my work.

The post lunch session was mainly proof reading. So, had to pay detailed attention to the sentences and if they were correctly used etc. Finished it by 4pm when I decided to write this post. Will wait for the clock to strike 5pm and then leave to pick up my sister and go back home.

In between all this I signed up at formula1.com so as to watch the Grand Prix live (not video obviously). They give much better statistics than espnstar.com. I also had time to read Arun’s Blog and even I wished that ‘Bullshit Bingo’ was known to us during our TAPMI days. Well classes would have been very entertaining.

Hmmmm….. Can we make our meeting more interesting?

Ctrl C + Ctrl V

Well this seems to be the mantra that is used everywhere these days. We used it a lot during our MBA and now I am using it again at Infosys.

I should say that we call cleared MBA thanks to Google uncle and to copy + paste. Where would we go without it?.

Well it has followed me again to Infosys (like it has to most of us in our respective companies). I spend the entire day just doing that. I kept searching for documents and then when I found them all I did was Ctrl C + Ctrl V. This is how proposals are made at Infy. As simple as that. Nerally 80 - 90% of the work happens this way. The remaining is typed with the help of some gyaan from the tech guy or the delivery manager.

Though this command existed I was not able to use it to the fullest towards the end of the day. I had to type some documents because we have only received a hard copy of the RFP and these documents have to be typed on the Infy letter head and needs the signatures of the top guns. After which they have to be couriered to the client. So I spend nearlly 3 hours typing all the documents and finally by 9pm I finished my work for the day. I would like to emphasise here that I did use copy+paste on a few occasions cos a few documents were the same except for some minor changes.

Spent 13 hours at office (the longest I have so far) and at the end of it all I have to say is...

3 cheers to Ctrl C + Ctrl V!!!

MORE OF THE SAME FOR THE NEXT 3-6 MONTHS!!!

3 Days!!!

Hi!
Nothing much happened over the past 3 days that I add seperate posts so I decided to post a single one today.

On friday I met my delivery manager and updated him what I had been reading. I also asked him as to when the next proposal was expected. He toled me that it would be there only after Monday. In the mean tim ehe asked me to help out on an ongoing porposal. Wow my first assignment!!

I had to help the team in finding some screen shots in SAP-HR for ESS/MSS (Employee self service / Manager Self Service). At first I didn't know where to find it as I had no clue of the HR module. So I first searched for some documentation and understood that it was not present on the R/3 system but on the Enterprise Portal. I idnot have access to the EP (Login and password) so had to wait for my teammate to come. She (Suparna Jha) finally arrived and she had the login id and password. We set about trying to get the screen shots. We were able to get a few screen shots for MSS but later the integration between R3 and EP was not happening propoerly. So we were not able to get any more screen shots. We informed the team about this and the time for submission was already up. So my first assignment was only partly successful.

On Saturday I went to Family Mart to purchase clother for my Dad, Mom, Nephew and Niece. Did the entire purchase for Rs. 2200/-. Not a bad deal I suppose. Rest of the day I just hung around not knowing what to do.

Sunday arrived and the only good thing was that I was able to get up late. I went to Big Bazaar and got some socks for myself (had only 3 pairs earlier). I am also planning to buy a apair of shoes (Nike), but lets see if not this month then next month. Now I am planning as to how to spend this months salary. Dividing money for investments, savings, expense etc. Lets see how it goes.

Finally the one liner...

SO FAR SO GOOD!!!!